The following is from Dr. John Mark Reynolds' blog a few years ago. I thought it was an excellent commentary on the culture of youth in which we live, and so I saved it. Reynolds is responding to an article which describes how a teenager advocated abortion and argued that the voice of teenagers ought to be heard. It is amazing how counter-cultural it is to say that the opinions children ought not to be heard!
"'Kids need to be concerned about more than themselves,' she said. 'They have valid viewpoints, and they need help from adults to implement their passions and concerns.' "
Here is a thought:
Kids do need to be concerned about more than themselves. Unlike Miss Abortion 2004, this altruism does not consist of making everyone else share your puerile concerns, but getting new ones. This remarkable process is called "growing up." Given their age, the young usually have foolish viewpoints. They need help from adults in gaining proper perspective, passions, and concerns.
The Cult of Youth marches on in our culture. We worship the mostly facile opinions of the ill prepared. I would say that almost everything I thought before I was twenty-two was not worth hearing. I needed to sit in tutorials and do hard work, not have people take me seriously. Of course, critics think this still true, but they can trust me that I was even worse as a young man than I am now.
There is a reason minors are not allowed to do many, many things. The reason: they cannot make informed decisions. Period. By the way, this applies equally to conservative groups who parade teens out mouthing conservative opinions they have hardly digested. Liberals since the sixties have been the worst at this. Even an aging hippie wants to be young, because they fantasize that there is some great purity and wisdom in the young. Well, no. Youth are to be protected and educated, not put in positions of power.
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